Transport company Stagecoach South West is seeing passenger numbers rise as people return to some form of normal living following the pandemic - and is expecting a further boost when Exeter’s £8m bus station opens.
Mike Watson, managing director, said bus patronage is now up to 65% of pre-Covid levels and he thinks it will continue to increase as people evaluate the risks, particularly as vaccination rates rise.
He also thinks commuter passenger levels will reach up to 70% of the pandemic volume, with some people continuing to work from home, although he is upbeat that eventually more people will return to the workplace.
And he is expecting , and the neighbouring St Sidwell’s Point leisure centre, to boost passenger numbers further.
Mr Watson sees both developments as part of Exeter’s continuing rise, with the city having benefited from major investments into the Cranbrook new town, Skypark business park, and Lidl and Amazon distribution centres.
“We have quite a lot of people on our buses at the moment, domestic tourists that have come to Torbay, for example, but the commuter market has been slow to return,” Mr Watson said.
“In the next six months we will see a lot more people returning to the workplace and will get to about 60% to 70%. Some will work from home, some will be at workplaces full time and some a hybrid.”
Mr Watson highlighted a recent Centre for Cities report which predicted the return of the five-day office week within two years, and said that people want social contact and added: “We are gregarious.”
He said has been hit by the closure of the night time economy and the holiday trade, with its services to Exeter and Bristol airports affected.
“We found that throughout Covid our patronage has gone up and down depending on the level of restrictions in society,” he said. But he said the public is now more comfortable with returning to a more normal existence, and said: “A year ago people were petrified, and with good reason, but there is a level of risk and people will evaluate their own personal risk.
“The most worried element a year ago were the clinically vulnerable and elderly. And they have now been fully vaccinated. They want their freedom back. They see the risk is much reduced.”
Stagecoach now has its services back to almost 100% in Plymouth, Barnstaple, Torbay and Exeter, though with precautions, such as vehicles having their windows open and an insistence on face coverings.
The company employs 1,200 people throughout the South West, with 400 of them expected to work from the new Exeter bus station.
Pre-Covid the firm carried about 14million passengers, just in Exeter, with half from the bus station and it is looking forward to using the new facility.
The company will continue to use its Matford depot, where the 160 buses that used to park overnight at the bus station are currently stored.
But it is aiming to be operating from the station by the end of July, although work is still ongoing and that includes installing Stagecoach offices and IT.
“The bus station is a big deal for us,” Mr Watson said. “Half of our services run from the bus station, the rest from the high street, so to have half our services back in the bus station will be brilliant. And it will be a much nicer facility.
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“We are fitting out and putting in IT equipment, getting that network connectivity right. We will have a period in advance when we can train drivers and do some familiarisation.”
The new facility will open in the school holidays, but measures will be taken to prevent crowding and a close eye is being kept on social distancing rules with “caution” about a grand opening event.
“But it has to open at some stage, and we will be ready,” Mr Watson said. “ It’s a bigger facility, and much nicer and more spacious for passengers.
“And it will have a leisure centre nearby, that will be convenient for people to go there from the bus station. The rest of the area around it will be developed at some point and that will be very exciting. That whole area is being transformed.
“Exeter’s regeneration has been amazing and the economy has gone from strength to strength, he added, highlighting Cranbrook, Skypark, Lidl and Amazon warehouses, now on the bus route for commuters, and the resurrection of the airport, with the likes of Logan Air now taking on former Flybe routes after that company's collapse, and Exeter College taking over the training facility.
“There is a lot of stuff going on,” he said. “Exciting times.”
